Cranky Users is organizing a DK 5 MetaFestival to celebrate our community and DK while working on the specific purpose of providing constructive and respectful feedback on DK 5 beta, both features we like or dislike.
Festival describes our blogathon perfectly! A festival is an "event ordinarily staged by a community, centering on and celebrating some unique aspect of that community and its traditions …. Festivals often serve to meet specific purposes."
DK groups are part of our traditions now. I remember back at DK4 beta time when DK developers gave birth to groups, Markos told me that he looked forward with anticipation to how our community would use groups!
We've done quite a bit with groups…but much more to come. So this MetaFestival is looking to find out the pros and cons of DK 5 on groups and our admin functions as well as individual bloggers to maintain a strong, vibrant community and also welcome newcomers to join our political activism and movement!
Our MetaFestival starts this week!
My diary is about how groups use templates for a variety of functions.
In the now inactive EcoAdvocates, we posted our template at the end of our diaries to identify a long list of writers and provide some information about our group. This was before groups were established and had profile pages. But in a world of one click is too many to get the information, this template provided the information right in the story!
Our EcoJustice series uses templates to provide a brief overview of environmental justice and is often included at the bottom of stories posted by members of this group.
In groups where I am admin or editor, we use templates in diaries and comments for a variety of functions, including: to spread word about take action items in templates that provide names and numbers of lawmakers to call (e.g., California fracking moratorium bill); to provide information, tips for submitting public comments, and links for posting comments on federal agency rules (e.g. multiple times over the years in opposition to XL Pipeline); providing links for petitions to sign; providing information so community can sign up for protests, civil disobedience actions, marches or rallies in DC, NY, and other parts of the country (e.g., People's Climate March, civil disobedience at White House, Harvard Divestment from fossil fuel); to provide information and links on members of our coalition with environmental justice and civil rights organizations. Other templates for blogathons provided a list and links to our special guests, DK bloggers, and diaries posted by them in our blogathon.
DK 5 limits our ability to be creative and original with templates.
This is what our SpiritSisters' group template looks like in DK 4:
SpiritSisters
≈
Beautiful graphic used with permission of artist Michelle Robinson.
SpiritSisters: Writing In Women's Voices is a group of women from all walks of life who have come together to tell our stories and discuss women's issues and rights. We come from every ethnic group, from multiple sexual orientations and gender identities, from a broad spectrum of ability status, from a wide array of socioeconomic classes, and from a diversity of traditions and cultures – spiritual, religious, and secular.
Dominant culture narratives do not represent our lives; they elide, alter, and erase. We are sisters in spirit, and we are taking back our narratives. We are joining together in a circle of mutual trust and support to share our stories, our histories, our identities, our very selves, as individual women and as members of all of the diverse communities and intersections where we live — and doing so in our own voices.
We discuss the harms women experience when the dominant culture does not accurately consider, believe or hear women's voices.
We will also celebrate and share the strengths of our sisters in struggle, and the stories of women who are making a difference.
SpiritSisters will be posting Thursday 4:30 pm (Pacific)/7:30 pm (Eastern) each week, and additional postings when members have time available. We are sending email notices (BCC to ensure privacy of email addresses) when diaries are posted. If you would like to join our email list, please kosmail rb137.
If you are interested in hearing our voices and reading our stories, we ask that you click "Follow."
SpiritSisters:
Andrea Spande, Denise Oliver Velez, Diogenes2008, JoanMar, kishik, mixedbag, moviemeister76, nomandates, Onomastic, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, peregrine kate, poco, ramara, rb137, shanikka, TexMex, TrueBlueMajority, Vita Brevis, and Yasuragi.
This is a smaller version of what this same template looks like in DK5: It was too large for me to take a screen cap so I had to reduce the size before I took the picture from the DK 5 beta on July 17. You really need to click onto this link to see the differences.
First overall, the DK5 template is huge.
In addition:
The top purple bar is gone.
The coloring of the group name "SpiritSisters" is changed to black text.
There is wide empty white space between the graphic and picture credit.
The green bar underneath the picture credit is gone.
There is wide empty white space between the missing green bar and group profile statement.
The text of the profile statement is very tiny in size.
There is more empty white space in between the paragraphs of the profile text.
There is more empty white space between the group name and list of members of group.
The green and purple bars at the bottom of template are gone.
And then lots of empty white space at the bottom.
|
There are both the individual and cumulative impacts of these differences between DK4 and DK5 capability. The very enormous size of the template at DK5, the many fields of white space, the faint and small text, the omission of borders of pretty colors – all combine to serve as distractions that lose the message in the template. Losing the message defeats the purpose of the template, and can reduce the effectiveness and capability of groups to be successful with our projects.
DK 5 recognizes the value of images to spread the word, and thus added the feature of pictures at the top of our stories. For over 5 years, our DK blog team did blogathons, each one effective and successful and exceeding our goals, for many reasons, including our templates. Jekyllnhyde reached more people to participate in our take action projects with his beautiful, eye-catching templates!
So, my wish list and request is that DK5 keep the ability for us to do templates for our group functions.
Jekyllnhyde will be posting later in our MetaFestival on templates too! Here's another original he did today!
|
Cranky Users MetaFestival - July/August 2015
Offering Constructive Feedback to DK5 Developers
Over the next few weeks, diaries will be posted by the below community members. Additional names will be added in coming days.
Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, maggiejean, Susan Grigsby, Yasuragi, 2thanks, Besame, rb137, belinda ridgewood, JekyllnHyde, brillig, enhydra lutris, nomandates, side pocket, FloridaSNMOM, Angela Marx, Frank Vyan Walton, bastrop, Chitown Kev, Pakalolo, and OceanDiver.
You can receive all future postings by clicking this link for the Cranky Users DK Group. Then, click 'Follow' and that will make all posted diaries show up in 'My Stream' of your Daily Kos page.
|